

MOPs & MOEs
MOPs & MOEs
Changing the fitness culture of the force. Your one stop shop for all things fitness for tactical professionals.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 27, 2022 • 1h 21min
Definitely not Legal Advice with Matt Fitzgerald
In our continuing effort to not get fired and/or go to jail over this podcast, we thought it might be prudent to talk to a legal professional. Matt's background as an infantry officer turned lawyer gives him a unique perspective on military issues, and as you'll hear in this episode he has a special focus on social media policy. In fact, his work has been a driving force behind recent updates to DoD social media rules. Among other outlets, you can find Matt's work on LawFare, War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, and the Harvard National Security Journal. After leaving active duty earlier this year he also provided over 1,000 hours of free legal support to displaced Afghans seeking asylum in the United States.
Disclaimer: Our discussion in no way reflects the official position of the Department of Defense or federal government, and nothing in this podcast episode should be understood as legal advice, nor does this discussion in any way form an attorney-client relationship. Don’t take legal advice from a podcast, but especially not from this podcast.
References we mention during the episode:
MWI article: https://mwi.usma.edu/monetizing-military-service-the-need-for-an-institutional-reckoning-on-ethics-and-social-media/'
"New" social media guidance: https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/540017p.PDF
Harvard National Security Journal / full form argument: https://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2021/03/Fitzgerald_Thank-Me-for-My-Service.pdf
Expanded recruiting pool argument: https://www.dayoneproject.org/ideas/a-digital-military-talent-initiative-for-noncitizen-technologists/
LTG (R) Hertling's TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWN13pKVp9s

Nov 20, 2022 • 1h 25min
How to Build Your PT Plan
No guest this time, just Alex and Drew trying to answer one of the most commonly asked questions we get here at MOPs & MOEs. Many of you are tactical professionals out there leading your teams without access to professional coaches. Or there are a lot of you training on your own with no guidance at all. So how do you build a plan that will produce results? This conversation will provide you with a few foundational principles you can apply to make sure you're on the right track. We discuss foundational movement patterns, conditioning modalities, frequencies for different types of training, balancing intensity and volume, and more. But we start with the most important thing, which too many people seem to forget: how to set a good goal.

Nov 13, 2022 • 1h 17min
Mind the Crack, with Chiropractor Aaron Kubal
Continuing our side quest of talking to the professionals calling BS on their professions, we're chatting with Chiropractor Aaron Kubal. He works specifically with chronic pain patients whose previous treatments have failed. Utilizing education & exercise, Aaron delivers a unique model of care that involves no manipulations whatsoever but rather focuses on graded exposure and patient empowerment. His approach is all about working WITH the person not on them.
Aaron is a huge advocate for evidence-based practice and has become extremely outspoken on social media in a way that is refreshing, but also makes many of his chiropractic peers very angry. His practice is delivered entirely through telehealth, which may be surprising to people who assume that chiros are all about cracking backs. As a result of his unique approach he is routinely invited to speak to audiences ranging from chiro students to orthopedic surgeons.
Follow him on Instagram @aaron_kubal or we hear he's a big deal on TikTok but we're too old for that.

Nov 6, 2022 • 1h 6min
How to be a Benevolent Guru with Angus Bradley
Angus Bradley is the quintessential Australian. He's a surfer who dropped out of college to tour with his band before getting into Olympic weightlifting which led him to his current career as a personal trainer (although he might really be a comedian). He now operates out of Sydney, Australia training people across the spectrum from gen pop to professional athletes and hosting the Hyperformance podcast. This episode definitely includes more laughter than any other we've done, but it also includes some solid gold nuggets of wisdom, references to economic theory, and discussions of the philosophy of science.
Some disclaimers: We get pretty unfiltered in this episode, so it's important to remind everyone that these are only our opinions, and do not reflect the positions of any organizations with which we are associated. It's also our first episode where I have to check the "explicit" block, thanks to some flowery language.

Oct 30, 2022 • 1h 11min
The Master of the Sword
On this episode we welcome the owner of what may be the coolest job title on the planet: COL Nick Gist, the Master of the Sword. He leads West Point's Department of Physical Education, which is both an academic department (teaching the Kinesiology major along with a couple fundamentals of fitness courses) and responsible for delivering the physical courses that all cadets must take. We ended up having a really cool conversation that centered around what people need to know to be effective in the fitness space, and what his department is trying to do to give them those tools.

Oct 23, 2022 • 1h 30min
Crossover Episode with Not Your Typical Doctors
This time the tables were turned and we were guests on the Not Your Typical Doctors podcast. We're airing it on our feed to give you guys a taste of their content, and if you like what you hear we'd encourage you to go check them out. Sarah and Alyse discuss very similar topics, but from a different perspective that offers valuable insights. In this particular conversation we covered wide ranging topics, but with a theme of what human performance teams' role is in mental health.
Disclaimer from Alex: at one point I say "brigade of 400 to 800 people" because apparently I'm an idiot and can't remember the difference between a battalion and a brigade.

Oct 16, 2022 • 1h 23min
Dave DeGroot 2: ACFT Boogaloo
Based on popular demand from many of you who listened to his previous episode, we brought LTC David DeGroot, PhD back to dive into the research process that led to the development of the ACFT. If you're familiar with the Baseline Soldier Physical Readiness Requirements Study (BSPRRS) he is one of the authors, and therefore played a key role in the creation of the test as we know it. In this conversation you'll hear a lot about the history (and a little bit about the politics) of how the Army determined that the APFT was an inadequate physical assessment, and how we got to the current version of the ACFT.
If you want to read the BSPRRS itself, you can find it here: https://www.iadlest.org/Portals/0/AD1097586%20Baseline%20Soldier%20Physical%20Readiness%20Requirements%20Study.pdf?ver=lI8Q0CmCEx_rmeabYlwG4Q%3D%3D
We also mention Dr. Chip East's history of Army physical training and testing which you can order in hard copy from Amazon, or you can access it digitally for free here: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/APRT_WhitfieldEast.pdf

Oct 9, 2022 • 24min
State of the Pod
Six months into making this podcast, we wanted to take a pause to talk about how it's going, and more importantly where it's going in the future. There are way more of you listening than we could possibly expected, and we always appreciate your feedback, so this is a quick break for us to talk directly to the audience. It's a short one, but hopefully you like what we're trying to do with this platform.
As mentioned in the episode, if you want to provide feedback, you can reach us at mopsnmoes@gmail.com

Oct 2, 2022 • 1h 11min
Thinking about Thinking with Chris McNamara
As our first repeat guest, we brought Chris back to have a conversation about thinking. Specifically, we wanted to cover several logical fallacies that often disrupt well intentioned planning and evaluation. Chris is a seasoned special operations veteran and emergency medical professional with numerous combat deployments, an accomplished coach, and an impressive athlete in his own right. We highly recommend that you listen to Chris' previous episode about assessments before diving into this one. We can't promise that knowing about these will make you immune to them - we're all guilty of these - but they will give you the tools to better assess your own thinking.
Topics we covered:
What is "MOPs & MOEs" all about?
Goodhart's Law
McNamara Fallacy
Survivorship Bias
Path Dependency
Bonus Topic: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Sep 25, 2022 • 1h 8min
Death in Navy SEAL Training: A Conversation on PEDs in Special Operations
Our guest for this episode is former Navy SEAL Jamie Monroe, who still lives near Coronado and has remained involved in the SEAL community including mentoring aspiring candidates. Jamie was a SEAL from the mid 90s through the early 2000s, serving on SEAL Team 1 and eventually transitioning into the Reserve. After his military time he got an MBA from Pepperdine and started pursuing entrepreneurial projects which have included everything from running a hair salon to managing sporting events. Incredibly, he also recently won an Emmy for his work with NBC Sunday Night Football. We wanted to talk to him about the recent news that a BUD/S candidate died shortly following Hell Week. You can find plenty of coverage about this on several news outlets, but when we refer to "the article" we're talking about the New York Times piece in particular, although some of the other pieces published recently are even more guilty of omitting relevant details. We dive into the specifics in this conversation, but suffice it to say that steroids were involved (among other drugs).
NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/us/navy-seal-training-death.html